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Darr Sued Over Personal Cellphone Number

Darr Sued Over Personal Cellphone Number

TIMES RECORD FILE PHOTO / Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Darr stands with his wife Kim and children, Madison, 12, and Cooper, 8, as he announces he will run for U.S. Congress fourth congressional district on Monday, August 12, 2013. Darr dropped out of the race Aug. 29.

LITTLE ROCK — A lawsuit filed Monday alleges that Lt. Gov. Mark Darr improperly redacted his cellphone number from records his office released under a Freedom of Information Act request.

According to the suit filed by lawyer and liberal blogger Matt Campbell in Pulaski County Circuit Court, Campbell submitted a request Oct. 17 for billing and usage of all phones, including land lines and cellphones, assigned to the lieutenant governor’s office.

A spokeswoman for Darr later told Campbell she had redacted Darr’s cellphone from the records at Darr’s request. Some employees’ personal cellphones had been redacted as well, making it impossible to tell from the records when Darr’s cellphone was used, according to Campbell.

Campbell argues in the suit that Darr’s phone number appears in the phone logs because Darr chose to use it for official business and that the state Freedom of Information Act does not allow elected officials to conduct state business in secret by using personally owned phones.

The suit asks for a court order requiring Darr to release the records without his cellphone number redacted.

“It makes no sense to suggest, as defendant now does, that he has an expectation of privacy in not disclosing his personal cellphone number in the billing and usage logs for the state-provided phones in defendant’s office,” Campbell’s lawsuit states. “These records are clearly public records, and defendant, who chose to use his personal cellphone to receive calls from his office, can have no expectation of privacy in the telephone records of communications related to state business.”

Darr said in a statement released by his office that he believed he had complied with Campbell’s FOI request to the fullest extent of the law.

Darr, a Republican elected in 2010, told Campbell in an Oct. 25 letter that he didn’t believe the public’s interest would be served by releasing the number.

“It is quite apparent that a statewide officeholder has a non-trivial privacy interest in not having everyone in the state have access to or knowledge of his personal cellphone number, especially because such information could be used for purposes of nuisance or harassment,” Darr wrote in the letter.

The suit is not the first complaint Campbell has filed against the Republican lieutenant governor. The state Ethics Commission is investigating a complaint by Campbell alleging that Darr violated state ethics laws by, among other things, using campaign contributions on items such as airline tickets, flowers, fuel, clothing and Razorback season tickets.

Darr has said the expenditures were intended to repay loans he made to his campaign and that he was not aware that state campaign laws did not allow loans to be repaid in that way.

After the Ethics Commission announced it was investigating Darr, he withdrew as a candidate in the 4th District congressional race. He has not said whether he will run for re-election.

Darr, a Mansfield native, campaigned for lieutenant governor on promises to bring more transparency to state government. He led the push for the creation of Transparency.Arkansas.gov, a state website that tracks government spending and was approved by the Legislature in 2011.